What the extra year really costs
A placement year usually costs about £2,500. A foundation year usually costs a full year.
On the cover: the Founder's Building, Royal Holloway, University of London, which offers a placement year or a year abroad on 237 courses. Photo: E R / Unsplash.
The Bottom Line
Nearly three in four UK undergraduate courses include an extra year — a placement in industry, a year studying abroad, or a foundation year before the degree begins. Families tend to treat "the extra year" as one thing. It isn't. Depending on which kind it is, it can cost a small fraction of a normal year or all of one.
We read what 131 universities charge international students for each kind of extra year, on their own pages. A placement year typically costs around £2,500, or a fifth of the annual fee. A year abroad ranges from 15% of the fee to the full fee. A foundation year is usually charged like any other year of the degree. And many universities don't publish the figure for international students at all.
What you absolutely need to know:
- Nearly three in four UK courses include an extra year, either built in or as an option
- A placement year usually costs a fraction of a normal year — typically around £2,500, or a fifth of the fee
- A year abroad can cost anything from 15% of the fee to the full fee
- A foundation year usually costs as much as any other year of the degree
- Many universities don't publish what international students pay for the extra year, and some contradict themselves
| Extra year | Typical international fee, where a flat sum is published | How it is usually charged |
|---|---|---|
| Placement year | £2,551 | A reduced fee — often 20% of the normal fee |
| Year abroad | £2,900 | Anything from 15% of the normal fee to the full fee |
| Foundation year | £18,000 | Usually the course's normal annual fee |
Medians of the flat sums universities publish for international students. The foundation figure is typically the full annual fee of the course it leads into, so it reflects which courses offer foundation years rather than a discount. Source: Telariq data.
1. Nearly three in four UK courses include an extra year, either built in or as an option
18,709 of the 25,399 undergraduate courses we hold involve an extra year of some kind.
Some build it in, so the course is four years from the day it starts: a placement year is part of 2,764 courses, a year abroad part of 2,833, and a foundation year part of 3,747. Many more offer it as an option: a placement year on 6,889 courses and a year abroad on 8,990.
Placement years are offered at 122 of the universities we researched, years abroad at 103, and foundation years at 110.
What this means for you: unless your child's course is strictly three years, there is an extra-year question to answer — and its cost depends entirely on which kind of year it is.
2. A placement year usually costs a fraction of a normal year
A placement year is spent working, usually in the UK, and the university charges a reduced fee while you are away. How reduced is the surprising part.
Of the 67 universities that publish what an international student pays for a placement year, 42 charge a flat sum — typically £2,551, with half between £1,938 and £3,552. The other 25 charge a percentage of the normal fee, most often 20%. None charges the full fee, and two charge nothing at all.
There are exceptions at the top. The University of Bath charges international students between £7,055 and £14,325 for a placement year, depending on the course.
Two readings to watch. At Keele and Aberystwyth, the percentage is of the UK Home fee, not of the international fee — so their placement year is cheaper than "20%" suggests. And the placement fee covers tuition only. You will still need to live somewhere for the year, and whether the placement is paid is a separate question for the employer.
What this means for you: a placement year typically adds a small fraction of a year's tuition to the bill, and often gives your child a year of work experience in return.
3. A year abroad can cost anything from 15% of the fee to the full fee
Years abroad vary more than any other kind of extra year, because universities have made genuinely different choices about them.
| What the university charges | Universities |
|---|---|
| A flat sum — typically £2,900 | 19 |
| 15% of the fee | 13 |
| Another percentage | 6 |
| Half the fee | 8 |
| The full fee | 8 |
48 universities publishing an international figure for a year abroad. Source: Telariq data.
Thirteen universities charge 15% of the normal fee. Eight charge half. Eight charge the full fee — so at those universities, the year abroad costs as much as a year at home.
What this means for you: if a year abroad appeals, the difference between universities can be worth well over £15,000. It is worth checking before you choose, not after.
4. A foundation year usually costs as much as any other year of the degree
A foundation year is taken before the degree begins, usually to bridge a gap between an overseas qualification and UK entry requirements. It is a full year of teaching, and it is priced like one.
Where a university publishes a figure, it is usually the course's normal annual fee — the foundation year is charged like every other year. Across the 72 universities publishing a flat international figure, the typical fee is £18,000, with half between £17,000 and £21,638, from a low of £9,250 to a high of £33,500. At Brunel, Liverpool John Moores, Manchester and Nottingham, the course page gives one annual fee that applies to the foundation year as much as to the rest.
At many universities, the foundation year is not run by the university at all but by a partner college — organisations such as Kaplan, INTO, Study Group, Navitas and ONCAMPUS. At Loughborough, for example, international students on integrated foundation years are directed to ONCAMPUS Loughborough, and the university's own fees page doesn't give that fee. The first year is spent with a different organisation.
On the same course, one extra year costs eleven times the other.
What this means for you: a foundation year is effectively a fourth year of fees and a fourth year of living costs. If your child's qualification means a foundation route, budget for four full years, not three.
5. Many universities don't publish what international students pay for the extra year, and some contradict themselves
This is the finding families are least likely to expect.
| Extra year | Publishes an international figure | Only a figure for all or unstated students | Publishes nothing | Universities offering it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Placement year | 67 | 32 | 21 | 122 |
| Year abroad | 48 | 31 | 23 | 103 |
| Foundation year | 81 | 5 | 18 | 110 |
Source: Telariq data.
For placement years, only 67 of 122 universities say what an international student pays. Another 32 give a figure without saying who it applies to, and 21 publish nothing at all — including UCL and the University of Cambridge. For a year abroad, 23 publish nothing, including the University of Surrey and Brunel. For foundation years, 18 publish nothing, including Imperial, Warwick, Birmingham and Exeter.
And where figures are published, they don't always agree. We found 13 contradictions across 8 universities. The University of Surrey gives three different figures for a placement year: 20% of the fee, £1,900 and £2,010. Teesside University says £1,350 on one page and "no extra cost" on another. The University of South Wales gives £3,230 and £1,000.
What this means for you: if the figure matters to your budget — and for a foundation year it certainly does — ask the university in writing, and keep the answer.
Our advice
Find out which kind of extra year your course has. A placement, a year abroad and a foundation year are priced so differently that knowing which one is involved matters more than knowing the university.
Budget a foundation year as a full year. Tuition and living costs both.
Check the year-abroad fee before you choose a university, not after — it ranges from 15% of the fee to the full fee.
Ask in writing when the figure isn't published, or when a university's pages disagree. For many universities, an email is the only way to get the number.
Confirm every fee with the university before you apply.
The not so fine print: what was excluded in this report
- Living costs during the extra year, which continue whether or not the fee is reduced
- Whether a placement is paid — that is set by the employer, not the university
- Foundation fees for every course: most universities were researched through one to three example courses
- Fees charged by partner colleges that run foundation years on a university's behalf
- Four universities whose pages could not be read because of automated access checks
- Medicine, dentistry and veterinary sciences, which are outside Telariq's coverage
Have a question? We'd love to hear from you — admin@telariq.com